Is there a more selfless, hard-working, dedicated group of people, who put everyone’s interests ahead of their own, than public servants? Maybe used car salesmen, real estate agents or drug dealers.
Queensland’s top union boss has threatened mass rolling strike action at the state’s hospitals, schools and police stations this year if the Liberal National Party government fails to deliver big pay rises across the public service.
Should anyone be surprised?
To compound the hit on the Queensland taxpayer, the previous Labor government spent years trying to sandbag its support by bloating out the public sector. Queensland has the highest ratio of public servants to population of the big three states (NSW, Victoria and Queensland). Queensland had not just the highest public sector employment growth of all states, but also the highest public sector wage growth, only slightly beaten by the ACT.
Last October, the Australian revealed that Queensland’s public service wage bill had exploded by more than 75 per cent in the near decade that Labor held office. Budget data showed that from the first financial year of the Palaszczuk government in 2015–16 to last year’s state budget, the cost of employee expense had risen from $19.96bn to $35.22bn which accompanied an increase of 57,000 full-time positions to a total of 266,999 public servants.
Yet, still Queensland’s taxpayer-funded leeches are screeching for an even bigger slice of the pie.
Unions for nurses, police and teachers are expected to seek significant pay rises to catch up with steep rises in inflation since their current agreements were struck, arguing it is needed to help with cost-of-living pressures and stop staff from moving to the private sector or interstate.
The Queensland Council of Unions general secretary, Jacqueline King, told The Australian the state had to find money for “fair and decent” pay rises and commit to a central wages policy for all public sector workers.
Or else.
“The alternative is that Queenslanders will face a year of rolling industrial and strike action across hospitals, schools, police and other services which both Victoria and NSW experienced in 2024 to secure wage rises,” she said. “We need to stop the churn of key staff going interstate and to the private sector and to ensure the government delivers on providing quality services to all Queenslanders, no matter where they live.”
It’s not as if they’re asking for much.
It is understood the Queensland Nurses and Midwives Union will possibly push for a doubling of the budgeted increase in order to keep pace with inflation.
In other words, a five per cent pay rise, on top of the already-generous year-on-year pay rises previously.
Like all spoiled children and public sector employees, though, they’re terrified that someone, somewhere, will get more than they do.
Ms Beaman said Victorian nurses and midwives had last year negotiated pay rises totalling 28.4 per cent over four years and the Crisafulli government needed to deliver an agreement that ensued Queensland was “well placed to recruit staff to work in Queensland” […]
Another “key ask” during negotiations will be for more housing and incentive payments for those working in regional and rural areas and to increase parental leave entitlements for public sector workers.
Ms King said while Queensland public sector workers were already among the best paid in the country, it was “vital” the government continued to outpace other states on wages or risk losing workers.
Oh, no… whatever would we do without public servants?
